The Words That Define Us
by Won'tforgetcanregret
Summary: There is one word that is the truth about each of us. It's the way we can most often be summarized. What is that word for each of the Gladers? Series of oneshots, AU but somewhat parallels book events sometimes. (In addition to the listed characters, Alby, Newt, Chuck, Teresa, and Gally are also featured)
1. Amnesiac

**Amnesiac**

After the car accident, the only thing Thomas could remember was his name.

He opened his eyes to a hospital room, white and sterile, filled with beeping equipment, wires, and far more doctors and nurses than it seemed possible to fit in the small space. Thomas blinked once, twice as they shone a bright light in his eyes.

"Visual calibration normal," one of the doctors announced.

"Can you understand us?" a nurse asked.

Thomas tried to nod, but found a thick bandage around his head obstructing his movement. "Yes," he croaked. His throat felt dry, his voice cracked like he hadn't used it in a while.

"Good. Can you tell us your name?"

"Thomas."

"Your last name?"

It felt like his brain had short-circuited suddenly. He couldn't think of it. Why couldn't he remember his own last name? Finally, after struggling for a minute, he gave up.

"I don't know. Where am I? Why am I here?"

The doctors muttered to each other. He caught things like "possible amnesia" and "too soon to tell."

"What's going on?" he demanded, as loud as his returning voice would permit.

The head doctor took a deep breath. "Ok. Your full name, according to record, is Thomas William Murphy. One day ago, you, your parents, and your younger brother Chuck were in a car accident."

Worry seized Thomas-worry for a family he couldn't remember. "Are they ok?"

A young looking blonde nurse, tasked with breaking the news, stepped forward. She put her hand on top of his, and the simple gesture set his heart racing with fear.

"Your father and brother are fine, a couple scrapes and bruises, but nothing major. Your side took most of the impact. I'm sorry, Thomas. Your mother is dead."

Thomas stared at her in shock. Memories were starting to circulate, vague images that couldn't quite surface of a hand on his forehead when he was sick, a woman and a younger boy cheering at his baseball games, a gentle voice in the passenger seat teaching him how to drive for the first time. Everything was so faint, even the faces unclear, but the pictures were definitely there. But the person in them, she was gone.

He wanted to scream or cry or maybe both. What was happening? Why was this world he had woken up into such a messed up place?

"Can I see them? My dad and brother?" Thomas' voice shook more with every word.

"Your dad is in another wing, overseeing certain...matters that need to be dealt with, but we can send your brother in."

"Ok. How old is he, by the way?"

"Chuck is 12."

"And me?"

"You're 16, Thomas." 16. He felt older. He felt like he had lived a thousand years in the few moments since he'd been awake.

Five minutes of silent waiting later, in which he desperately wracked his brain for anything other than brief flashes of memory, a boy was guided in by yet another nurse. Thomas looked him over quickly. He was short, but a little on the bigger side, with curly brown hair and red-rimmed, bright blue eyes that clearly showed he'd been crying.

"Thomas, are you ok?" Chuck's voice was trembling even more than his own.

"I think so. I don't know what all this-" he made a vague gesture at the wires and bandages he had ignored in all the chaos, "-is for, but I feel ok except...I don't know if they told you this, but I don't really remember anything.

"That's what they said," Chuck replied. He was clearly fighting not to burst into tears and Thomas felt a surge of respect for how hard he was trying.

"It's alright. You're just going to have to help me for now, until everything comes back." He didn't look at the doctors, didn't want them to say it never would.

Someone provided a chair,and Chuck sat down and started talking. "We live in Denver, Colorado. Our dad, John Murphy, he's a salesman, and he's not around too much. This was the one weekend he was in town. Mom, Eleanor, she was great though. She was always there, and-and-" That was the last straw. Chuck broke down and started sobbing. Thomas tried to think of anything he could say to console him, but it was like he was lost in an ocean, alone and confused.

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**Hey guys, this is a random series of oneshots I wrote when I was stuck on Letters to the Glade (I'M WORKING ON IT, I PROMISE, DON'T HURT ME). Anyway, it basically came out of the idea that we tend to categorize people, and then I decided on one word for each of the characters I wanted to write about. There'll probably be about 5 total. So, hope you liked it, please review!**


	2. Liar

**Quite honestly, this is my favorite chapter. Because Newt.**

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**Liar**

Newt was that kid that's the odd combination of "daydreams in class" and "wants perfect grades".

Sure, working hard and doing well on tests and everything was fine, but did there really have to be so much...attention-paying?

English was definitely the worst class for this. (Physics was boring, but he continually found himself jerked back to reality by what he thought was the teacher calling his name but was in fact one of Newton's theories being explained. Shucking Newton.) And so it was that as the class was analyzing the poem Sea Fever, he was lost in a daydream, alone on a sailboat with the wind whipping around him, waves crashing and sea spray hitting his face. It was a strange kind of stormy-peaceful, another world that he found himself unable to leave until finally he was pulled back to himself by the bell. The teacher left the room with the quickly exiting stream of students to go pick up assignments, and as he hurried to shove all his papers in his bag, he realized he was not quite alone. A girl with long red hair stood in the corner, ostensibly checking her phone. Finally, after glancing quickly up at him a few times and looking away just as quickly, she took the few steps over to him. She never spoke much, or he never paid enough attention, but he thought her name might be Amalie.

She took a deep breath, and spoke. "Hey, so I don't mean to be rude, but I've been wondering for a while now. How did...how did you get your limp?" She bit her lip as she asked, nervous about asking such a personal question.

Newt answered with the lie he'd used for as many years as he'd lived here. "When I was little, I jumped out a window. Trying to fly or some stupid kid thing like that. Broke my leg and it never healed right. I was lucky though, any higher and it would've killed me."

"Oh," the girl said. "Well...I'm sorry."

"It's ok. It doesn't hurt all the time, it just doesn't work quite right," Newt replied. Again, a standard reply. The warning bell rang and she drifted away. Newt left in a different direction, but inside, he was wondering how many times he'd heard "I'm sorry." Like this time, it was almost always filled with sympathy, but every time he couldn't help but ask himself how much sympathy they would have if they knew the real story. Or was there only pity for a messed up kid that had tried to kill himself at age 15?

He couldn't help but think about that day a lot. It was back when he'd lived outside of Chicago, not that the location had played a part, really. At that point in his life, everything had really just sucked. He didn't know when it had started, but it had gotten to the point where he utterly hated himself. He was never good enough, was never going to be good enough. His life was a mess anyway. And then his friend had died. His one real friend, who had kept him going through the pain and the anger had been killed in a random shooting. Everything had spiraled out of control, and it led to one wreck of a teenage boy standing on the ledge of a building. The fall should have killed him. He wondered why it hadn't, but suddenly he had woken up from complete blackness to find himself lying in an alley, bleeding, broken, and alone. The police found him, a few hours later, and that was where he told the first of so many lies about what had happened. He told them he'd been hit by a car, giving them an imaginary license plate number. It would be enough to keep them busy until they had something more important. He had been taken to the hospital, and though his other injuries healed, something had gone wrong with one of the surgeries on his leg, which had been only slightly better than pulverized in the fall. He would walk with a limp forever.

Things had started to get better when he had moved to Colorado. He had a good friend he could always count on to help him, and all the little things were never as bad as they used to be. But his injury would never let him forget how broken he once had been, no matter how much he could lie to the world.

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**Remember when I said this was my favorite chapter? Well, I'm weird. Anyway, please review! **


	3. Troublemaker

**Troublemaker**

School was honestly just incredibly boring, in Minho's opinion. The work wasn't that hard, but bringing himself to care about any of it definitely was. And so, on the sixth day of school, he found himself in the office for the results of opening day of prank season. It didn't bother him anymore, the yelling and the detentions. He loved the thrill of pulling stunts off, loved the infamy the stupid little tricks gained him. And truthfully? It was a heck of a lot more fun than doing math.

He was headed out of the building, having received his sentence, when suddenly he met up with Teresa. Of course, of all the people to run into, it had to be his foster sister. Unless she'd been called to meet him. Either way, she looked like she knew exactly what was going on and how she was going to murder him for it.

"You've got to be kidding me, Minho." Teresa crossed her arms and stared in disbelief. "We've been back to school for a week and you're already suspended. What the shuck did you even do?"

Minho hesitated for a second but couldn't resist bragging. "Superglued a bunch of stuff. Chairs to the ground, erasers to the board, things like that."

"Who was stupid enough to give you superglue?"

"Took it out of the cupboard at home."

"Shuck it, how many times have I told you to quit doing stuff like that?" Teresa had stopped in her tracks, glaring at him. "You're a pain sometimes, but I don't want you sent back to the foster system."

Not that Minho particularly wanted to be shipped off again either. Ever since he was little, when his dad had died and his mom had abandoned him, he'd been shuttled off to a long line of foster families. Some of them were rich, some poor, some tried too hard to make him "better," and some were just plain crazy. Teresa's family wasn't too bad, considering everything else he'd dealt with. He'd prefer staying with them, even if Teresa, not far off from his polar opposite, could be obnoxious. The problem was, it was just hard to do what they expected of him; make at least average grades in school, don't get into trouble, basically fix habits that were proving themselves difficult to break.

He decided carefully on his answer. "Sorry. You're a pain too, but at least you're not a shucking psycho like some of the other kids I've been with. Staying at your house isn't too bad."

"Um...thanks, I think."

"Look, I really am trying to get it together. I want to get my grades up so I can try out for track, but I just can't seem to do it." The funny part was, he was having trouble deciding whether it was the truth or a lie. He wanted to do better, but could he really change the person he'd become these 17 years?

He was expecting another lecture from straight-A, perfect Teresa. It wouldn't be the first time. What he got was what he entirely wasn't expecting. "Hey, we'll work on it." Minho was actually surprised by the warmth in her tone. "Just promise me that when you get back to school, you'll try to go at least a month without making me get another call from the principal."

"I'll do my best. I can't promise you any more than that." It wasn't just a promise to her. In that moment, he told himself that he was going to try to change.

"I can work with that."

For the first time he could remember, Minho smiled at her. Sometimes help came from the place you least expected it. Then he realized something, and started sprinting back to the house to disable his last booby trap above her door.

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**So, hope you guys liked this chapter. I wanted to do something interesting with the Minho and Teresa dynamics, so this was what happened. Anyway, I also wanted to let you guys know that I'll be traveling and this is basically the last time I'm going to have internet for a while. I promise I'll work on this and Letters to the Glade and everything while I'm gone, so I can give you some really good updates when I get back. Anyway, please review! Thanks for reading :D**


	4. Kleptomaniac

**Guess who's back, everyone. ME. I've been on the ocean for a week and had no time to write, but I figured I'd get this one up. If you're wondering, Letters to the Glade will hopefully be updated soon as well.**

**I must admit, the premise for this chapter probably won't make total sense, but stick with me, I explain it at the end. **

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**Kleptomaniac**

Unlike most of the guys in the gang, Gally wasn't a full-on drug addict. He didn't really drink that much, either. But he quickly found out that there are things in this world just as habit-forming as any substance. Things like stealing.  
It had started small, on a dare, actually. Somebody had bet him he didn't have the guts to swipe a cheap watch while the owner was distracted. It wasn't hard. He had simply stashed his own watch in his pocket and walked out wearing the stolen one, even buying a pack of gum before leaving. He didn't think twice about it at the time, but it was the turning point. When you steal once, the next time becomes easier.  
The second thing he took was a pocketknife, a replacement for the useless one he had. It was shortly followed by bigger, more expensive items; cell phones, jewelry, a couple of bottles of beer. After the first two things, he never kept any of them, and made better money reselling them than he ever would have in a job. And that was his descent. Simple and virtually irreversible.  
This time, though, he was aiming a little higher than before. He sat in an alley, not really the dark, creepy movie type, but certainly out of the way. He waited for hours before anyone came by. Finally, when the sun had started to set, a couple of silhouettes appeared. He crept closer to them, and grinned as he realized that one of the figures had a purse barely balanced on her shoulder. Perfect. He stuck to the shadows, slipped up beside them, and lunged. The bag slipped easily off the girl's shoulder and she shrieked and ran.  
He prepared to escape, but he wasn't exactly expecting a voice to come from behind him.  
"I'd give that back, if I were you." Gally whirled and found himself face to face with a sharp knife. Or, more accurately, a pretty brunette girl with a sharp knife.  
"Oh, come on, we both know you're not going to stab me," Gally said, trying to sound as nonchalant as he could with a blade flashing a few inches away from him.  
"Willing to take your chances?" The girl stepped closer. "I could claim you attacked me, and no one would ever know."  
"You-you're crazy."  
She smiled disarmingly. "Maybe. Maybe not. Give that to me so I can return it to my friend, and you don't have to find out."  
"I can't. I need the money for my-" he frantically wracked his brain. "-mother's medicine."  
"Do you think I'm stupid? I've seen you around, you're part of that gang. None of you need the money, you just steal stuff because you can."  
Shuck. Gally made a mental note not to underestimate the next person he met in a back alley. "So what's the deal? I give this back to you, and you...what? Put away the knife, I hope?"  
"You give it to me, we both leave, and pretend we never met. Here's your side of the deal, though. You give me your phone number, and the next time I hear about something going missing, you'd better have a good alibi, or I'll be turning you in."  
She pulled out her phone, and typed in the digits as he recited them.  
Finally, he handed the bag back over to her.  
She took it, and said, "Well, you don't seem like an entirely terrible person, so I hope I don't have to talk to you again. I'd prefer not to have to call the police on you." She stuck out her hand and he shook it.  
"Um...thanks. Oh, and I'm Gally Richardson, by the way."  
"Brenda. Brenda Despain. Remember what I said. Nice to meet you, klepto boy." She walked away.  
Well. That had definitely been interesting. He'd have to see how well the whole not-stealing thing worked out, but on the bright side, he wasn't being arrested, and a pretty girl had his phone number. Things could be a lot worse.

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**This one was a little less canon, but I wanted to reflect the way he changes in the books, and kind of breaks out of the power of whatever has been controlling him, so this was what I came up with. Anyway, I hope you guys are excited for the next, and most likely last, chapter. Quite honestly, even I'm excited for it.  
Hope you liked this chapter, please review!**


	5. Aggressive

**Alright everyone, if I'm going to be honest with you, this might be my favorite chapter I wrote for this. Hope you all like it!**

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**Aggressive**  
Football tryouts in junior year marked the first time Alby had ever gotten into a fight at school. Well, after tryouts really. It was also how he discovered that when people saw two guys coming out of an empty classroom, having been there for quite a while, they tended to make certain assumptions. And of course, none of these assumptions had been that his best friend had texted him in the middle of a full-scale panic attack to come help him.  
He'd done well at tryouts. Apparently, some of the other guys thought he had done a little too well. The way they saw it, he was just out to take their positions. And the thing is with teenagers, when they're angry, nothing is off limits. And that's when the two things came together.  
As everyone was in the locker getting ready to leave, one of the players announced, "I'm not sure I'm comfortable having a ho-mo-sex-u-al on the team." He drew the word out and stopped dead in front of Alby.  
Alby ignored the petty attempt to offend him._ Don't let him get to you,_ he told himself. _You're above that_.  
A second figure appeared in front of him. "Oh yeah? Who's his guy?"  
"That weird blond kid, the one with the accent and the limp. Kinda crazy."  
Alby found his voice. "You shut your shuck face about him. He's been through more hell than you ever will." If they wanted to mess with him, fine. His best friend? Not fine.  
One of the guys wolf whistled. "Ooh, touchy, aren't we?"  
"Hey, he's got to defend his boyfriend," the other one laughed.  
"He's not my boyfriend, get it into your thick heads. He's my friend and he needed help." By now, Alby's temper was flaring, and did nothing to help his argument.  
"'Help,' sure-" whatever else the guy was going to say was cut off by Alby's fist in his face as his control snapped. The two guys stared in shock for a second, then one of them swung back. Alby sidestepped and the fist hit a locker instead. The kid's face twisted in a mix of anger and pain, and a second later, they were both on him. He ducked one punch and hit back with a couple of his own before he was slammed with a knee to the gut. As he gasped for breath, his vision hazed over and his hearing was replaced with a dull ringing. With a cold, newfound fury, he threw himself back into the fight. Everything seemed like it was happening on autopilot, until he dodged a swing, came up behind the attacker, and shoved him into a bank of lockers. The pained yell of the guy who now had blood streaming from his nose brought him back to his senses.  
As did the shouting of the coach, who was standing in the doorway looking positively livid.  
Mentally, Alby ran through his entire repertoire of swear words. God, he'd certainly done it now.  
Approximately forty minutes later, Alby stalked out of the office, angry and drained. Newt had waited outside for him. He always did, although Alby had no idea where his best friend went after school.  
"Well, guess what," Alby announced.  
"This sounds bloody wonderful," Newt replied with trepidation, catching the anger in Alby's tone. "What?"  
"I'm off the team."  
"What the shuck?!"  
"Couple of slintheads wanted to start a fight in the locker room. Said some stuff about me, and...about you. Threw a couple punches, kid ended up having his face slammed into a locker, and I've been kicked off the team for being too 'aggressive.'"  
"Um...wow."  
"Yeah. Shuck-faced slintheads."  
Newt turned to face him. "Dude, I don't even care what people say about me anymore. You didn't have to do that."  
"You're mighty self-centered if you thought I was doing that for you," Alby replied with a crooked half-smile. "They said some nasty klunk about me, too. They just did it to try to get me kicked off, and I was stupid enough to take the bait."  
"Well, I'm sorry, anyway." They walked in silence for a little while.  
"I don't regret it, you know," Alby stated. "Maybe I am too aggressive, but there was something...satisfying about it all."  
Newt laughed a little at that. "You're a bloody psycho alright, but you're also my best friend, and that's got to count for something, too."  
"Oh, because the word of the resident crazy kid counts for so much."  
"Watch it, or I'll take back the nice things I just said about you."  
"Shucking terrified now, for sure," Alby chuckled. "Anyway, I've got to get home. My parents are going to flip. Did I mention I'm suspended for more than a week as well? And I got off easy, too."  
"Bloody hell, what'd you do the poor kids?"  
Alby just grinned, and they walked the rest of the way home in quiet, except the occasional attempt to push each other off the sidewalk.

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**Hope you guys liked this chapter. It's probably going to be the last one, unless I think of another character I want to do a chapter on. I hope you all liked this little miniseries thing, and I would love to see you all soon when I start putting out my longer fanfic (theoretically soon, at least...) Thanks for reading, please review!**


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